Q: I am trying to determine what type of Internet connection
I should get based on theoretical speed. My question is which connection would
be faster: data streams via radio frequency (RF) or data streams via fiber optic
cable?

NASA

Fiber-optic cables.

A: A fiber-optic connection is faster than wireless by many orders of magnitude.
A single optical fiber can carry about 3 trillion bits per second (bps). The
fastest wireless service (fixed wireless access) approaches 2 million bps. So,
fiber optics can be more than a million times faster.

Running Internet messages on wireless is more difficult when fading occurs,
says Vahid Tarokh, electrical engineering and computer science professor at
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. "This makes the practical throughput
of Wireless Internet much less than the peak rates (that are usually advertised
by the providers).

Dense wave division multiplexing (DWDM) is the process of putting many colors
of light-each carrying its own data stream-onto a single strand of fiber-optics
cable and sorting out the data streams at the other end. The extremely clever
scheme enables a single strand of fiber-optics cable to carry up to 3 trillion
bits of information per second.

The two emerging technologies, wireless and fiber optics, are difficult to
compare since breakthroughs with one or the other happen frequently. Every six
to nine months the number of colors you can put on a fiber-optics strand doubles:
from 4 in 1996 to 320 now, in 2001 with no increase in cost. The cable's in
place. This revolutionary technology will probably sweep the Internet just as
the cheap PCs that everyone could afford swept the computing world back in the
1980s.

Think of the speed. Suppose you were to download the entire Library of Congress
onto your PC using a dial-up modem transferring data at a rate of 56 thousand
bps. You'd have trouble storing that much admittedly but-it would take about
82 years. A wireless connection going at 2 million bps would move the library
in a little over two years. How long would a 3-trillion-bps fiber-optics connection
take? 48 seconds.

Is fiber available? Bell South is installing and testing fiber-to-the-home
connections in 200,000 homes in Atlanta and Miami. The fiber-optics system,
fast but not state of the art, operates at 10 billion bps. Even so, Bell South's
connection only takes 4 hours to transfer the Library of Congress. In a few
years, maybe your city will have it.